“Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”

-Ephesians 6:5-9

Our series on biblical patriarchy has challenged many assumptions. In marriage, the home, the church, and society, patriarchy that is truly biblical is a far cry from the abusive patriarchy that has been common throughout history. That abuse manifests itself in various ways today, so we must conclude our discussion on biblical patriarchy by addressing abuse within patriarchy. This has been described as “hyper-patriarchy”, but that term is not well-defined, allowing egalitarians and complementarians to use it when attacking biblical patriarchy. I will use “abusive patriarchy” instead.

A Definition That Excludes Abuse

We defined biblical patriarchy as any hierarchy ruled by a father figure who bears certain responsibilities for specific people and exercises the associated authority over them in obedience to God. In order to be biblical, a patriarch must first be appointed to a particular position, which gives him certain responsibilities for the people under him. The only reason he has authority is to fulfill those responsibilities—for which he is answerable to God. Abuse occurs when patriarchs forget that fact and act as if they are accountable to no one.

The biblical patriarch focuses on obeying God and fulfilling his God-given responsibilities. The abusive patriarch focuses on himself. He only fulfills the responsibilities he must in order to maintain his position. Whether through raw power or manipulating religion, he creates a system that serves himself. He uses threats, coercion, manipulation, and other tactics to abuse the very people that God appointed him to protect. How can we prevent biblical patriarchies from devolving into abusive systems like that?

Dealing with Abusive Patriarchy

In nations, homes, or churches, biblical patriarchy can be abused by powerful men distorting Scripture. When an abusive man claims the name of Christ, we must confront him with Scripture properly interpreted and remind him that God is the source of his authority and that He will severely judge misuse of that authority (Jeremiah 7:11-12, 23:1-2, Ezekiel 34:1-10). We must remind him of his God-given responsibilities and call him to better reflect Christ by focusing on fulfilling them.

Under biblical patriarchy, there is always a higher authority to which we can appeal. The abusive husband must be confronted by the church through church discipline (Matthew 18:17-19) and by the proper civil authorities (Romans 13:1-7). The abusive pastor is disobeying the command to shepherd the flock (1 Peter 5:1-5), so he must be confronted, removed from the pulpit (1 Timothy 5:20), and criminally charged if needed. If a church refuses to remove an abusive pastor, members would be right to leave that church. The abusive civil leader should be removed by legal means, but we should always remember that God will judge him in the end (Romans 12:19). Diligence in appealing to the proper higher authority will undermine and eventually eliminate the oppression that people fear in biblical patriarchy.

Does Biblical Patriarchy Justify Oppression?

This type of confrontation may work on individual abusers, but can it prevent the system as a whole from justifying abuse with religious language? Let’s address this by examining a system that does just that: Islam. Many think Muslims and Christians worship the same God, so they assume biblical patriarchy would mirror Islam’s oppression. The god Muslims call “Allah” bears only superficial resemblance to the Triune God. Instead, the god of Islam is the cruel moon god of Mecca concocted by the imagination of Muhammad—a murdering, enslaving, Seventh-Century pervert. Our God saves us through the work of Christ and transforms us to imitate Him in good works. In contrast, Allah does not deal with sin beyond merely commanding obedience, so Islam lacks true salvation and internal transformation.[1] Therefore, Muslims are simply compelled to obey Allah like slaves would obey a powerful but harsh master. That is the opposite of biblical patriarchy.

Muhammad admired Christianity, so he imported certain Christian teachings into his false religion. Since he had numerous wives and frequently bedded female slaves, he did not adopt Christianity’s high esteem of women but fashioned his religion to justify devaluing and abusing them.[2] As Abraham Kuyper observed, Muhammad reduced women to “little more than the subordinate objects of manly lust”.[3] Kuyper continued: “The religion of Islam cannot impart an inspirational element to a woman’s daily life. She knows the man is at the heart of Islam’s very existence and that there is absolutely no room for her”.[4] Essentially, Muhammad laid abusive patriarchy into Islam’s foundation. Due to God’s common grace and the impact of Christianity on the world, many Muslims do not abuse women. Nevertheless, Islam has facilitated oppression from the beginning, so abuse is rampant in Islamic regimes like the Taliban, Hamas, ISIS, and Iran. Because oppression is a deviation from biblical patriarchy, we need not fear that a family, church, or nation embracing biblical patriarchy would oppress women like Islam.

The greater risk is “Christians” using the terms of biblical patriarchy to justify abuse, as seen in the fictional dystopian regime of Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. Feminists have adopted the story’s red dresses and white bonnets to protest conservative policies, equating restrictions on their ability to murder their babies with the slavery and forced surrogacy inflicted upon the titular handmaids. Even many Christians assume an unapologetically-Christian nation with a biblically-based legal system would be just like Gilead. However, Gilead is not a government of genuine Christians trying to obey the Bible. Fredhelm Hartenstein found that religion is “ideologically abused by the rulers in Gilead, as in many totalitarian regimes, where it serves as merely a tool of power and oppression not so very different from corporeal punishment and guns”.[5] Therefore, Atwood’s oppressive “Christian” regime is based on hijacked and distorted Scriptures. The way to prevent or undermine such regimes is to obey Scripture rightly interpreted.

Polygamy

Having contrasted biblical patriarchy with the abusive systems of true Islam and fictional Gilead, we need to deal with a few issues that hijack biblical patriarchy in our day, starting with polygamy. Though polygamy is unthinkable for most Christians, some men use the language of biblical patriarchy to claim that polygamy is biblical and good. After all, Scripture never explicitly outlaws polygamy but records its practice by some of the great men of faith. They argue that polygamy is preferrable to promiscuity, no-fault divorce, adulterous affairs, and fatherless homes. However, that highlights the wickedness of our society, not the merits of polygamy.

Any “biblical” support for polygamy comes from a misunderstanding of the Bible. Scripture never praises patriarchs like Abraham and David for their polygamy but focuses on its disastrous consequences. Furthermore, Scripture commands husbands to nurture, cherish, and adequately provide for their wives (Ephesians 5:25-33). A godly husband also seeks to please his wife, just as a godly wife seeks to please her husband (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). An honest man will recognize that doing all this for one woman is hard enough. Only a foolish man would think he could adequately nurture, cherish, provide for, and please multiple women. Even if Scripture didn’t teach against polygamy, a godly man would never consider it.

However, Scripture does teach against polygamy. Jesus undermined polygamy along with most divorce when He reminded religious leaders that marriage was created before the Fall as a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:3-9). Also, elders and deacons must be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6), making polygamy a disqualification for leaders in the church, not a status symbol as it is in other cultures. Scripture eliminates any “biblical” argument for polygamy by likening marriage to the relationship between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:22-33). There is only one universal Church, so Christ has only one Bride. Therefore, while the Bible lacks a clear and succinct command against polygamy, it does undermine it such that polygamy always diminishes wherever the Gospel takes hold.[6] In short, biblical patriarchy does not lead to polygamy but undermines it.

Red and Black Pills

Polygamy may be unthinkable for most of us in the West, but as Doug Wilson observed, it is merely the desire “to bed down a lot of women, along with the paperwork to make it respectable”.[7] In the West, that desire often manifests in the “Red Pill” internet subculture, also known as the “manosphere”. Inspired by The Matrix, taking the Red Pill means accepting the fact that much of the world’s official narrative is false and dangerous.[8] While rejecting any sinful worldview is good, those in the manosphere do not do so in a biblical way or using biblical means. One of the most pernicious lies of our culture is feminism, so Red Pill men (and women) seek to undo the damage of feminism by strengthening men and emphasizing male leadership. Men like Andrew Tate teach men to embrace their strength and reject feminist attempts to emasculate them. The devastation caused by feminism is difficult to overstate, so it should surprise no one that after decades of oppression by feminists, men are flocking to the opposite view.

In some ways, this is a positive development. The manosphere encourages men to work hard, improve themselves, use their strength well, and favor truly feminine women over loud, entitled “boss babes”. However, the Red Pill subculture can promote an ideal of manhood focused on gaining enough wealth and physical strength to attract and bed as many women as possible.[9] Proponents therefore celebrate promiscuity in men while demonizing it in women. In this way, the manosphere mirrors Islam by viewing the woman as a tool to be used and abused for the man’s pleasure and status.

A dangerous companion of the Red Pill is the Black Pill, which promotes a sense of despair about the state of the world.[10] In this view, marriage is so distorted by feminism and the risks of divorce are so great that men are driven to avoid marriage until the institutionalized injustice against men is removed from the legal system. Influencers like Pearl Davis actively dissuade men from getting married. I have previously discussed how this is a sinful view that godly men must avoid. Christian men must instead exhibit wisdom to choose the right bride and courage to face the risks for the good of the Kingdom. Both “pills” are in opposition to biblical patriarchy.

Tradwives

While some are responding to feminism by embracing “the pills”, others are embracing the ideal of the traditional wife or “tradwife”. The tradwife embraces and seeks to excel at genuine femininity, motherhood, and homemaking while dressing in a modest and traditional way. This is a largely-positive development, but the tradwife trend can reduce godly femininity to an overly-idealistic aesthetic. Tradwife influencers can mislead women by portraying the joys of homemaking without the challenges. Homemaking—like anything else worth doing—is arduous and often thankless work. It is wonderful for women to embrace biblical femininity and their role in the home; however, they must recognize that their glorious role as homemakers often demands much more from them than social media influencers lead them to believe.

The Christian tradwife influencer must also be careful of her motives. Is she posting to get attention or genuinely trying to teach other women skills that will help them be better homemakers? Also, is she painting an unrealistic picture of homemaking that is impossible to attain by real women? Finally, as I have previously noted, it is sinful for a woman’s work to detract from her responsibilities in the home. The tradwife influencer can spend so much time and effort planning, recording, editing, posting, and responding to comments about her content that she neglects her husband, children, and home. Therefore, the tradwife internet subculture has value but also risks. We must take every thought (and internet fad) captive to obey Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Internet Pastors

Finally, some pastors who espouse biblical patriarchy interact online in ways that contradict their calling as pastors and undermine their argument. They become purposely confrontational and “edgy” online in order to increase their exposure. Pastors must not be quarrelsome (2 Timothy 2:24), so they must not stir up controversy that does not naturally arise from declaring the truth of Scripture. Often, pastors make controversial posts with little context, wait for the inevitable firestorm in the comment section, and engage in mud-slinging arguments with those who challenge them. An egregious example of this occurred last year from Pastor Brian Sauvé, who often speaks of biblical patriarchy. He posted on X asking why women vote for leftist candidates. His wife and fellow podcast host, Lexy, responded, “women are dumb”. While I have benefitted from much of his teaching and admire his work advancing Christendom, his posts like this are foolish and divisive, ultimately undermining biblical patriarchy and even the Gospel itself. The allure of a vast online audience can tempt many pastors into this behavior.

Furthermore, just like the Christian tradwife influencer, a pastor can spend so much time and effort generating online content that he neglects his responsibilities to his own family and church. Both in person and online, the pastor should exemplify the character qualities required of him—just as every biblical patriarch should.

Conclusion

In the end, we can readily admit that patriarchy can be abused in various ways. Nevertheless, we have seen that those abuses are the opposite of biblical patriarchy. Islam, polygamy, and the manosphere are not biblical patriarchy taken to extremes but an antithetical to true biblical patriarchy. Because of sin, abuse will be a perennial problem that even the best biblical patriarchs must address. Even so, Christ is working to restore our fallen world, and biblical patriarchy is part of that work. The antidote to abuse is not to shy away from biblical patriarchy but to embrace it even more.

In this series, we have seen that God established all human institutions as biblical patriarchies and expects us to submit to our roles within them. God created the family first, appointing the husband as the head of the household, giving him commands to obey in that role and the authority he needs to obey those commands. God then provided the wife as his suitable helper and children who are to obey and honor their parents. The church, civil government, and the workplace are all to follow this pattern of hierarchy, responsible headship, and submission. Biblical patriarchy is not an outdated and oppressive concept to be shunned but a great blessing to be embraced. Therefore, let us shun the feminist poisons of egalitarianism and complementarianism, instead striving to make our homes, churches, and society conform to the biblical model or patriarchy. Let us obey God in this and expect His blessing: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).

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[1] Abraham Kuyper, On Islam, ed. James D. Bratt et al., trans. Jan van Vliet, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology, Bellingham, WA: Acton Institute; Lexham Press: 2017: 172-173.

[2] Ibid: 65.

[3] Ibid: 62.

[4] Ibid: 65.

[5] Friedhelm Hartenstein, “The Bible, Religion, and Power in Maragaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: A Close Reading from the Perspective of Biblical Scholarship”, Journal of Religion in Film and Media, 1 October 2024: 44.

[6] Douglas Wilson, Fidelity: How to Be a One-Woman Man, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 2012: 95.

[7] Ibid: 92.

[8] Andrew T. Walker, “Coat Your Red Pill With Christian Ethics”, WORLD Magazine, 25 August 2025.

[9] Elyse Willemsen, “’Doing What God Designed Men to Do’: Red Pilled Christians’ Quest for Patriarchy, According to Scripture”, Insights, Global Network on Extremism & Technology, 11 March 2024.

[10] Andrew T. Walker, “Coat Your Red Pill With Christian Ethics”, WORLD Magazine, 25 August 2025.

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